Abraham Part 3 - Separation

I’m too young to remember the days when children headed off to the cinema in their thousands on Saturday mornings to watch the latest instalment of Flash Gordon or whatever was showing.

But I’m old enough to remember those same serials when they were on television on a Saturday morning, in the days when we had just three channels to choose from. So I was raised on a diet of Flash Gordon, Champion the Wonder Horse, Casey Jones and Robinson Crusoe and if that rings bells with you, I think we can safely say that you’re at least middle aged.

 
And part of the routine was that they’d always begin this week’s episode by reminding you how last week’s ended. And as we progress through the story of Abram, that’s going to be a necessary feature of our Sunday mornings.

So let me remind you that so far, in Genesis chapter 12, Abram’s been called away from his kin and homeland by God on the basis of two promises – he’s been promised descendants – which he thought he’d never have - and he’s been promised a land in which to raise them.

And he’s travelled to that land – the land of Canaan – but when things get difficult he bails out and heads for Egypt and finds himself in a whole load of trouble.

Pharaoh takes Abram’s wife Sarai to be his latest conquest, not knowing she’s already married, and for that indiscretion he and his household suffer the consequences of divine judgment. And in a rage Pharaoh turfs them out of Egypt with a four word rebuke: “Here, wife, take, go”.

And so they do.

And that’s where we find them as this morning’s reel begins (MAP). And we’re already learning that, unlike those Saturday morning TV shows, the world isn’t divided into baddies who wear black cowboy hats and goodies who wear white ones. Even a character as venerated as Father Abram has his complexites. We’re dealing with real people here, not caricatures.

Abram went north out of Egypt to the southern part of Canaan with his wife and everything he owned, and Lot went with him.

Up until this point, we haven’t heard a lot about Lot, who was Abram’s nephew. The last time he was mentioned was in Chapter 12 verse 4, and he’s spoken of in the very same terms:

“When Abram was 75 years old he started out from Haran, as the Lord had told him to do; and Lot went with him.”

 Now we don’t know much about Lot other than he was the son of Abram’s brother, Haran, and that his father died while he was still young. In effect, Abram became a surrogate father figure for him.

Don’t know how old Lot was when Abram set out on his journey, whether he was of an age where he could look after himself, but it’s interesting to ask whether it was ever God’s intention that Lot should go with Abram on his travels.

“Leave your country, your relatives and your father’s house” God had said. I wonder if that was meant to include Lot. I wonder whether Lot pleaded to go along, or whether Abram couldn’t bear to part from him.

You see Lot was the next best thing to a son. If things stayed the same, he would end up as Abram’s heir. So how would he feel about this promise of descendants for Abram and Sarai? Would he be jealous? Would that create trouble further down the line?

Does the author of Genesis mean us to understand that the words “and Lot went with him” are pregnant with meaning? Could be. Especially given what transpires later on.

But for now they’re travelling together, and as we know from verse 2 –

Abram was a very rich man, with sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as silver and gold.
 
And let’s just pause there long enough to remember that sheep, goats, cattle, silver and gold aren’t enough to satisfy the longings of the human heart. They weren’t enough for Abram and they aren’t enough for us.

We long for place, for purpose, for belonging, for significance. For love. Wealth, without those things, is comfortable misery. Poverty, with them, is far more bearable.

Abram had wealth, but if we could listen in, I think we’d hear him humming that U2 song – “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”.

Now look where he goes looking (3):

Then he left there and moved from place to place, going toward Bethel. He reached the place between Bethel and Ai where he had camped before 4 and had built an altar. There he worshiped the Lord.

 Now isn’t that interesting. In this strange journey he’s on, where the parameters seem so undefined and the destination so unclear, where do his feet take him? They take him back to a place that had significance for him. A place where he felt he belonged, in some way. A place where he’d left his mark on the landscape in the form of an altar. A place he could worship.

We’re creatures of sense; and for creatures like us, places have great significance. Especially places we’ve invested in and where we feel we belong.

Walk into this church some evening when you’re alone and the sunlight’s bathing it in golden light, and it’s almost tangible – the significance of this place.

But it needn’t just be here. All of us, I think, have what the Celts called ‘thin places’. Places where God feels especially close.

Years ago, when I first became a Christian, and I had something I needed to ponder, or to sort out between God and myself, I would head out to Slemish mountain.

Antrim’s a hilly county and Slemish presides over the farmland around Ballymena and if the stories are true, St Patrick used to tend sheep on it’s slopes as a slave boy.

It’s not really much of a hill – a little brother even to Bennachie, but the views you get even from the car park are wonderful.

Many’s the time I’d take myself out there to that place, not just because it was a lovely spot to think and pray, but because in the going, I was saying to God that I meant business. That I was really looking for him.

And today, I do the same thing most mornings, when the kids have left for school and Rhona’s off to her work. Slemish is a bit far away now, so what I do is move a chair in front of the window in the lounge that overlooks the church, and it’s there that I keep my morning appointment with God.

That little corner of the room has become my sacred place. The study’s too busy with books and papers; I needed somewhere that was more about soul than mind. And that’s where I’ve chosen to make it.

Place matters. Abram’s feet led him back to Bethel – somewhere he felt at home and also close to God. Do you have that kind of a place in your life somewhere? If not, could you find one? Somewhere you can be with God intentionally, little and often?

For folk like us, constantly at the mercy of the clock, and our emotions and our digestion, having a place we can go to where we know we’re there to do business with God can be a real help.

Abram reached the place between Bethel and Ai where he had camped before 4 and had built an altar. There he worshiped the Lord.

But what about Lot (5)?

 Lot also had sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as his own family and servants. 6 And so there was not enough pasture land for the two of them to stay together, because they had too many animals. 7 So quarrels broke out between the men who took care of Abram's animals and those who took care of Lot's animals. (At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites were still living in the land.)

Isn’t it interesting how riches, which we think will solve all our problems, can actually create more of them. How many families get on fine ‘til it comes to the matter of inheritances or land?

Now the problem they had was a genuine one – the land they were living in was already occupied by the Canaanites and their little-known cousins the Perizzites. And with the grass being scrubland, and both Abram and Lot’s herds doing well, there just wasn’t enough pasture to go round. And that’s when the arguments began.

And at this point, I think the Good News Bible lets us down a wee bit.

Verse 8 in the GNB reads:

 Then Abram said to Lot, “We are relatives, and your men and my men shouldn't be quarreling.
 
But that misses something important out. This is how the same verse reads in the NIV:

⁸So Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and mine, for we are brothers.

The quarrelling, or potential quarrelling, isn’t just between the herdsmen, it’s between Abram and Lot themselves. And how Abram deals with it is very instructive.

“It’s wrong for us to be quarrelling over this stuff” – he says. “We’re kin and we shouldn’t be fighting. Let’s find a way to sort this out.”

And that way of dealing with the fallouts that inevitably arise between people is totally in keeping with the flow of Scripture, from Old Testament to New.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says:

“if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

That’s a hard teaching, but we get it from the lips of Christ himself and we daren’t miss what he’s saying. If we choose to live in enmity towards a brother or sister in Christ, we cannot expect to live in fellowship with God.

The Apostle Paul says the same to his churches in the letter to the Ephesians:  Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbour, for we are all members of one body. ²⁶“In your anger do not sin”^£: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, ²⁷and do not give the devil a foothold.”

Put positively, he says in Romans: “Honour one another above yourselves. Live in harmony with one another. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone”

The Biblical reponse to disputes between believers is both realistic and pragmatic. What makes us different is not that these things never happen; it’s that when they happen, we take a different approach. We have to learn to bring them into the light, deal with them and sort them out quickly rather than letting them fester.

That’s how things have to be done in the family of God.

So what does Abram suggest by way of a solution? (9)

 

So let's separate. Choose any part of the land you want. You go one way, and I'll go the other.”

Abram chooses the way of grace. In settling this dispute, not only does he agree to let go of the young man who’s the closest thing he has to a son, he’s giving Lot first choice of the land, when as the senior man it would have been his prerogative to dictate terms.

So how does Lot honour that?

Lot looked around and saw that the whole Jordan Valley, all the way to Zoar, had plenty of water, like the Garden of the Lord or like the land of Egypt. (This was before the Lord had destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.) 11 So Lot chose the whole Jordan Valley for himself and moved away toward the east. That is how the two men parted.

What do you make of that, I wonder?

You’ll maybe know the story about the two wee brothers whose mum offers them a piece of cake, but one of the slices is much bigger than the other.

She offers the plate to the younger boy first and he helps himself to the big slice, much to the older boy’s annoyance. “Whoa! Hang on a minute. What are you doing taking the big slice?!  If mum had offered me the plate first, I’d have taken the smaller one out of good manners.”

“Aye, I know.” said the younger lad. “And if you’d taken the wee bit, I’d end up with the big bit. So what’s the problem?!”

Lot, in some senses, does the logical thing here. He takes the best land.  But as we remembered last week, the logical thing to do isn’t necessarily the right thing to do.

After all those years living off his Uncles’ good will, it seems selfish at best to deliberately choose all the best, most fertile land for yourself. But that’s what he does – though if you know the story, things don’t go entirely as planned once he starts living within easy reach of the cities of the pain.

So Abram, having done what’s right and gracious, seems to have been dealt a double blow. He’s lost the nearest thing he has to a son, and he’s just given away the best of the land.

But things don’t end there (14)

After Lot had left, the Lord said to Abram, “From where you are, look carefully in all directions.

I am going to give you and your descendants all the land that you see, and it will be yours forever. 16 I am going to give you so many descendants that no one will be able to count them all; it would be as easy to count all the specks of dust on earth! 17 Now, go and look over the whole land, because I am going to give it all to you.”

At a moment when Abram could have despaired that God’s promises were slipping away from him, they were re-iterated with more precision and more force than ever before.

God had promised Abram land. Now he was actually looking at that land, and being promised everything that he could see. And note that – everything- even the land to the east that Lot had just helped himself to.

Abram, in grace, had given it away without rancour for the sake of peace. Now, almost in the same breath, God was promising it would still be his.

And as he stood there, on the dusty hillside, watching  the nearest thing he had to a descendant making his way down towards the fertile plain, the dust swirling around his feet took on a whole new meaning for him as God spoke to his heart.

Abram, no one will be able to count your descendants; it would be as easy to count all the specks of dust on earth!

Abram has learned from his time in Egypt. He’s got himself back on track with God again - he’s in a better place. He’s acted out of faith and generosity in the middle of a tough situation. And the promises God’s made to him are more real than ever.

Amen, and thanks be to God for his word.